It's been over a year since we've entertained any new ones, but as luck would have it, Carrie Clickard is here to satisfy your thirst for this looks-easy-but-isn't poetry form. She's filled her paddy wagon with a ditty-load of 'em, so let's join her for the ride, shall we? It'll be grand!

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Welcome to another Rhyme Crime Investigation

... and the first official meeting of Limerick Writers Anonymous.

There’s a rustle of shuffling feet and a surreptitious slurping of coffee as the meeting comes to order. Stepping up to a rickety podium in front of the thicket of folding chairs, a determined but ill at ease woman clears her throat and says: “Hi, my name is Carrie, and I’m a limerick writer.”

What? No chorus of comradely hello’s back? Sigh. It’s hard to find anyone who’ll stand up and proudly declare themselves a limerick writer—which is a pity for a poetic form that can count Elizabeth I, Thomas Aquinas, Aristophanes, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Rudyard Kipling and Shakespeare among its practitioners. A swift search of YouTube will also offer up limericks recited by Garrison Keillor, Michael Palin, Christopher Hitchens and even a NASA astronaut.

No, really—one of the questions on the NASA application asked astronaut candidates to describe their selection process in a tweet, a haiku or a limerick. If you watch the video you'll discover his limerick is a bit of a metrical shambles, but as a poet, how cool is it knowing that there’s one part of the astronaut’s application process we could ACE? I’m trading in my comfy sweats for a spacesuit.

So why has this once-proud five line AABBA form ended up in the doggerel house? It might have just a bit to do with content. Morris Bishop expressed the problem wittily in a limerick of his own:

The limerick is furtive and mean;You must keep her in close quarantine,Or she sneaks to the slumsAnd promptly becomesDisorderly, drunk, and obscene.

It’s true. The limericks everyone seems to remember have lines that end in Nantucket. (No, no, I’m not going to repeat it. Look it up if you must.) But it’s not just bad behavior that gets limerick writers sneered at, it’s bad SCANSION. Time and again you find limericks limping along with scraggly line length, verb inversions, forced meter a regular rogue’s gallery of Rhyme Crime perpetrators. You’d think with only five lines it would be easy-peasy to keep rhyme crisp, clean and correct. But like a certain bishop in Hong Kong, you’d be wrong.

Researching for this post I found a surprising number of clunkers from poets whose pen I’m not worthy to touch. Like:

There is a poor sneak called Rossetti As a painter with many kicks met he With more as a man But sometimes he ran And that saved the rear of Rossetti.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

and

There was a professor named ChestertonWho went for a walk with his best shirt onBeing hungry he ate itbut lived to regret itand ruined his life for his digestion.W S Gilbert

Ouch. I could add a dozen more examples, but if you’ve been following along with the Rhyme Crime posts, you’re probably already diagnosing the problems and fixing them in your head. “Ate it” and “regret it” don’t rhyme, even in a Cockney accent. “Kicks met he” is an inversion you wouldn’t get away with today. The lines aren’t consistent in syllable length. And whether “best shirt on” and digestion rhyme is debatable. So if two such noted poets can slip up, can we hope to do better? We can but try, as my English teacher used to say.

Don't miss a beat

Back in the day, limericks most often used anapestic meter – two short syllables followed by a long one – three feet in lines 1, 2 and 5, and only two feet in lines 3 and 4. So:

Anapestic verse was a favorite of Dr. Seuss, and thus holds a special place in my heart, but if it isn’t your cup of tea, that’s ok. Modern limericks can be written in your meter-of-choice but the rules still apply. Rhythm must be consistent, unforced and you need to have a uniform number of beats in rhyming lines. If you have to put the em-PHAS-is on the wrong syl-LA-ble, or swallow a syllable to make things fit, go back and rewrite. You can do better.

Now before you throw out the baby with the bathwater, remember we’re ruling out weak word choices, not the joy of wordplay. The fun Ogden Nash has in this verse is enough to make any critic overlook the one extra beat.

A wonderful bird is the pelican,His bill can hold more than his beli-can.He can take in his beakFood enough for a weekBut I’m damned if I see how the heli-can.

The same can be said for Mark Twain’s clever abbreviated verse. Be sure you read “Co.” as “company” and do the same at the end of lines 2 and 5 or you’ll miss the joke.

A man hired by John Smith and Co.Loudly declared that he’d tho.Men that he sawDumping dirt by the doorThe drivers, therefore, didn’t do. *

This limerick is simply sublimeIt’s flawless in meter and rhyme.As for wit, pun or thought? It expresses but naught and to write it took acres of time.Anonymous

Like any poem, a good limerick will communicate with the reader, expressing a meaning, a feeling, or both. Whether your intent is jovial, snide, silly, bawdy, romantic or educational, if you don’t get your point across, all the reader ends up with is a collection of syllables. You’ve got five lines and a handful of syllables to do it in. Use them wisely.

Scare your readers:

Each night father fills me with dread when he sits on the foot of my bed; I’d not mind that he speaks in vile gibbers and squeaks but for seventeen years he's been dead.

Edward Gorey

Teach them something:

It filled Galileo with mirth To watch his two rocks fall to Earth.He gladly proclaimed, "Their rates are the same,And quite independent of girth!

American Physical Society contest entry

Break their hearts:

My life has become a motif of daily compassion and grief, of watching the ends of lovers and friends whose candles have been far too brief.

Lawrence Schimel From … Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Metres, edited by Annie Finch and Alexandra Oliver:

Leave them laughing:

A young girl at college, Miss Breeze, Weighted down by B.A.s and Lit.D's, Collapsed from the strain, Said her doctor, "It's plain You are killing yourself — by degrees!"

Anonymous

And we’re doing all this, why?

Clearly some good hard work and poetry chops go into limerick writing, when you’re doing it right. What are you going to do with them now that you’ve got those little witty jewels polished to perfection? Send them out into the world to earn a living, naturally.

Try the Saturday Evening Post Limerick Contest. Six times a year the
Saturday Evening Post holds a limerick contest based on one of their
iconic cover illustrations. Winners are published in the print
magazine, online and win a small cash prize. A select few talented
runners up get published on the website too, like someone we all know
and love here at Today’s Little Ditty, Ms. Michelle Heidenrich Barnes.
You can read her fabulous limerick on the Saturday Evening Post site here and learn about how to enter the contest yourself here.

And, drumroll please, if you happen to be both a limerick fan and a word nerd like me, here’s an irresistible opportunity: The Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form.
Uh huh, you heard that right. Their goal is to “write at least one
limerick for each meaning of each and every word in the English
language. Our best limericks will clearly define their words in a
humorous or interesting way, although some may provide more
entertainment than definition, or vice versa.” They’re currently
working on Aa through Ge, and expect to be completed in 2076.

I am so going to do this. Maybe I’ll start with E for “Equations” like the brainiac who turned this mathematical equation into a limerick:

It’s not a trick. There IS a limerick in all those number. Here’s a little clue: Think of words we might use in place of numbers, for example people often say a “dozen” eggs instead of twelve.

Give up? (I certainly did.) So, here's the answer:

A dozen, a gross, and a score Plus three times the square root of four Divided by seven Plus five times eleven Is nine squared and not a bit more.

Jon Saxton

That’s some wicked clever thinking and some pretty mad limerick skills as well. Feeling inspired? What are you still doing here? Go on, get out there and WRITE.

I could've used this handy guide last week when I tried my hand at limericks! They're​ so deceptively simple yet maddeningly difficult to get right! I have so much respect for poets who can make crafting limericks look effortless.

Limericks are a challenge, as you've laid out nicely. I've borrowed the form to tell a story, linking up three limericks, rather like the Japanese poets link up tankas, but I am aware this is a divergence from the rules. Sometimes the writing of limericks reminds me of writing tankas, in counting syllables, staying to five lines, varying the line length and trying to find the elusive element. In Limericks, the humorous surprise. In tanka's, the epiphany revealed by nature. Thanks for sharing Michelle's limerick. I liked it. What a challenge to write a limerick from a magazine cover.

Finally getting around to leaving comments on all the great posts I visited Friday. Michelle - another keeper/winner; Carrie, thank you for all the time and thought and wit and wisdom in this fulsome Limerick tour! Loved it all, and the link to Michelle's poem. (Deep bow, tweed cap in hand.)

About Me

I write children's poetry, picture books, and greeting card copy. My creative challenge is to bring out the natural musicality and rhythm of words and let them bounce around (and otherwise run amok) within the sphere of my imagination. Please visit my website at MichelleHBarnes.com

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